Rebecca Felton spoke to “women with wealth, position, and intelligence” as she saw them as the only ones capable of inducing the most significant change in society. Through numerous speeches and articles, Felton proposed to these white elite women that, through women’s organizations and personal endeavors, they should lobby for a higher legal age of consent for Georgia’s girls, equal education, the establishment of strict punishments for sex crimes, the requirement of marriage permits, the regulation of heredity, and a temperance decree. Felton depicted active agitation as a womanly obligation, just as she earlier represented women’s rights and advancement to be a responsibility of manhood. However, many women were concerned that they would
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However, in a culture dominated by men, this task proved to be problematic. After exhausting all efforts in regards to male compliance, Felton knew that it was time to develop a new strategy to once again strive to build a society where men and women’s interests were promoted similarly. Because men had been unresponsive to not only appeals to them directly, but also through appeals of their wives, mothers, and sisters, Rebecca Felton decided that it was time to embrace the option of women’s suffrage to enable women to represent their own interests and actions in society. After spending many years stating that women were not seeking to take political power from me and only wanted their interests represented in the political arena, she decided it was time for women to fight for themselves because men had so blatantly ignored every plea to provide protection and equality to …show more content…
Suffrage women plead for many of the same interests Felton had been advocating for, including a higher consent age, equal ownership of children between mother and father, compulsory education, and equal pay in the workforce. In 1915, Felton pursued yet another attack on the manhood of Georgia’s men by stating that the government composed of men was responsible for the state seceding from the Union. She argued that the decisions that led to the Civil War “plumped Georgia into a state of destruction” and women were powerless in the decisions, but suffered immensely. Therefore, she contended that the time had arrived for women to finally have the political vote to choose their future for themselves and ensure their own well-being. In a pamphlet entitled the “Subjection of Women and the Enfranchisement of Women” she declared that the ballot was not a privilege, but a right regardless of
However, in a culture dominated by men, this task proved to be problematic. After exhausting all efforts in regards to male compliance, Felton knew that it was time to develop a new strategy to once again strive to build a society where men and women’s interests were promoted similarly. Because men had been unresponsive to not only appeals to them directly, but also through appeals of their wives, mothers, and sisters, Rebecca Felton decided that it was time to embrace the option of women’s suffrage to enable women to represent their own interests and actions in society. After spending many years stating that women were not seeking to take political power from me and only wanted their interests represented in the political arena, she decided it was time for women to fight for themselves because men had so blatantly ignored every plea to provide protection and equality to …show more content…
Suffrage women plead for many of the same interests Felton had been advocating for, including a higher consent age, equal ownership of children between mother and father, compulsory education, and equal pay in the workforce. In 1915, Felton pursued yet another attack on the manhood of Georgia’s men by stating that the government composed of men was responsible for the state seceding from the Union. She argued that the decisions that led to the Civil War “plumped Georgia into a state of destruction” and women were powerless in the decisions, but suffered immensely. Therefore, she contended that the time had arrived for women to finally have the political vote to choose their future for themselves and ensure their own well-being. In a pamphlet entitled the “Subjection of Women and the Enfranchisement of Women” she declared that the ballot was not a privilege, but a right regardless of